by Vella Munn
Michon waited.
“I was pregnant. Chas wanted us to get married. I said it wouldn’t work out. I—I think he understood that by then.”
“Pregnant?” Michon barely got the word out.
“Chas offered to support the baby. He even offered to raise it himself. He probably would have done it. But”—April faltered a minute and then went on—“I had this business. A woman in my position doesn’t get pregnant. I told Chas I was going to get an abortion, and if he didn’t understand why, he was even more of a child than I thought he was. It was the cruelest, most stupid thing I could have said. The abortion was the biggest mistake of my life.”
Chapter Fourteen
No matter what Michon did the rest of that day, she couldn’t shake April’s words. And it wasn’t just learning that April had carried Chas’s baby. It was knowing Chas as well as she did and understanding how hurt he’d been.
April had said a few more things about how it wasn’t a crime for a woman to have an abortion, especially if she wasn’t cut out for motherhood. She made the point that she hadn’t worked for years to place her position in the business community in jeopardy. “Men no longer snicker when I call myself Ms. Can you imagine what they’d think if I had to break an appointment because I had a baby with a runny nose? It—it was too late when I realized how much the woman in me needed that baby with the runny nose.”
Michon didn’t hate April. She was entitled to her beliefs, her life-style. But Michon now understood why Chas had so much bitterness stored up in him. April didn’t want his child. She accused him of being immature because he couldn’t see her side of the issue—at least what he knew of her side.
And then Michon had come along, in her ignorance throwing out the same words.
But Michon wasn’t April. She was another woman, a woman deeply and totally in love with Chas Carson.
He couldn’t be a woman hater. They wouldn’t have had their night in the cabin if he had been. Yes, he was wary, scarred, unable to trust his emotions. But there was tenderness and the capacity to love again in him.
Was Michon the woman to show Chas that? She didn’t have any ready answers, but she knew that her own life was only half a life without him.
Michon slept poorly that night and awoke without any sense of drive for the day. Should she go see Chas, try one more time? Was there anything to say? How would he react to April’s regret? She managed to fill up the morning by cleaning her apartment and putting away her belongings. She knew she was stalling, but didn’t push the point. Maybe the last thing Chas wanted was to have any contact with her. She tried to tell herself that a few words of explanation would clear up everything, but that wasn’t true. If Chas’s thinking hadn’t changed—and there was no indication that it had—then knowing about a baby and its effect on Chas wouldn’t put her in the arms of the man she loved.
“What would you do, Worthless?” she asked her constant companion. “You don’t give me any peace when it’s dinnertime. Do you think I should keep after Chas the same way?”
Her dog had no answers. It was the telephone that put her on the road to Shady Cove. She was trying to decide where to store the rubber-soled shoes Chas had given her when his voice speaking in response to her hello swept her mind clean of all thoughts except how he sounded in a hollow cabin.
“Have you gone back to work?” he asked without preliminary.
She explained that she was going to look into Harry’s suggestion regarding aide work since she should be able to juggle that with classes, but all she really wanted to do was let his deep tones seep through her.
“I have a suggestion,” he interrupted. “I don’t know. Maybe you don’t want to have anything to do with this, but there’s a special summer-school program being initiated at the Shady Cove High School this year. They need a teacher’s aide to work with learning disabled kids. It doesn’t pay much, but it’d give you some teaching experience. Let you see if this is what you really want.”
What I want is you. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that. Who do I have to talk to?”
Chas paused. Then: “Why don’t you let me act as go-between. The school officials know me and I can vouch for you. I don’t know. Maybe you’re not interested in spending your summer in a one-horse town.”
As long as you’re there it’s perfect. “It sounds exactly like what I need to get my feet wet,” she said with a calm she didn’t feel. “When should I come up there?”
“Today. If you take the job you’ll probably want to find a place to stay here. There’s one I want to show you. Michon, don’t come unless you really want to.”
I do! I do! “I’ll be there in a couple of hours,” she promised and hung up.
A half hour later Michon was in her car heading toward Shady Cove. With each mile she became more nervous. Don’t come unless you want to, Chas had said. Was there a deeper meaning to his words? How would he react to what she had to say about April? Would she have the courage to tell him, or would his manner reveal that what they’d shared on the John Day was history?
The sight of Chas’s log home at the end of the dirt road brought back a thousand memories, memories that gave her the courage to face him—to face her future. At least he cared enough to call about the job opening. His pickup was parked out in front, but if Chas was working outside she couldn’t see him. As she stepped out of her car she fought off the feeling of being watched and headed for the steps. It was just nerves that made her so sensitive. Chas wasn’t the kind of man who would stand in the shadows watching someone.
She went up the stairs, her fingers once again caressing the smooth wood grain, her eyes appreciative of the way sunlight danced on the polished surface. No wonder she was dissatisfied with her own place. Who would choose stucco over the beauty of real wood? The house and Chas complemented each other well.
Michon heard footsteps and then the door opened. Chas, naked from the waist up, stood staring at her. “I saw you come up,” was all he said.
“I caught you in the middle of something,” she apologized, wondering where the strength to speak came from. “There’s sawdust in your hair.”
“I wasn’t sure you’d come. It’s good to see you, Michon.”
He was happy to see her? She felt suddenly weak. Did he have any idea how much she wanted him? Her weakness made her speak without thinking. “Chas, I met April.”
Chas took a step back. His jaw muscles tightened and his eyes started to darken. “Why?”
“I’ll tell you if you let me in.”
Michon closed the door behind her. If Chas thought she had the situation well in hand, he was mistaken. Inside she was shaking, terrified that any moment she would say the wrong thing. Why hadn’t she thought out what she was going to say ahead of time? But during the trip up, whenever she tried to picture herself and Chas standing face to face, all she could think about was what had happened to her when he stripped her of her clothes and made love to her in a sleeping bag.
And now he was looming over her, his half-dressed state making it impossible for her to clear her mind. “I interrupted something,” she stammered. “What were you doing?”
“That’s not what we were talking about.”
“I know. Please don’t make things any harder on me. I hardly know what I’m saying.”
Chas’s arms hung at his side. “That makes two of us. I didn’t expect you to say that about April.” He seemed almost shy as he took her arm. “What if we settle on a safer topic? I’ll show you what I’m doing. I hope you like it.”
Before she could comment, he was leading her through the sunlit living room with its high beamed ceiling. He didn’t relax his hold on her arm until he had her in the kitchen and was pointing at the bank of windows around the kitchen nook. “I’m building on a balcony here so I can eat outside. It can get lonely here, I’ve learned. This puts me closer to the birds and squirrels. I was setting the supports today.”
The logs stuck in the ground and reaching up to what would be floor lev
el for the balcony explained the sweat still glistening on Chas’s flesh and the traces of sawdust in his hair. The kitchen was full of timber and tools.
“I love it,” she breathed. “You can see the whole mountainside from here. You could sit out here in the summer and watch the sun set.”
“I guess.”
“What do you mean, you guess? That’s why you’re doing it, isn’t it?”
“Maybe. And maybe I’m just trying to keep busy. I used to enjoy my own company. That’s changed.”
“I miss the kids too,” she acknowledged, although she had a gut feeling that that wasn’t what he was talking about. “It was the best experience of my life. I’m just sorry Harry got hurt.”
“Me too. At least he’s going to be all right.” Chas leaned against the kitchen wall, a gesture that took him away from her and gave her desperately needed breathing room. “We both overreacted when it happened.”
“I—I just wish I hadn’t said what I did,” Michon whispered. They’d danced around the issue too long. It was time to face the argument that had driven a wedge between them.
“Look, Michon, it’s over and done with. The past—”
“Is that what we are, the past?” Michon struggled against her tears before finding the courage to go on. “Chas, April hurt you. I understand how deep the wound goes, but I’m not April.”
“I know that.” He closed his eyes. The gesture gave Michon the opportunity to concentrate on his face without his eyes distracting her. There were dark circles and lines of tension she hadn’t noted before. He sighed and went on. “Michon, you said the same thing April did. When the two women I’ve cared for in my life tell me to grow up, I can’t help but react.”
“I didn’t mean it! Chas, I was upset. I was scared for Harry. I didn’t know what I was saying.”
Chas opened his eyes. “Didn’t you? I’m not sure. If you met April, then you know what a success she’s made of her life. You’ve decided to go back to college, become a history teacher. That’s the kind of thing a grown woman does. How well do I stack up beside the two of you?” With a weary gesture Chas rubbed his eyes. “There’s one thing I want you to understand. I might not wear a suit and carry a briefcase to work, but I’m happy with what I am. I can’t change. I don’t want to.”
“Chas?” Michon curled her fingers into fists to keep from reaching for his tortured face. “You’re all the man I’ve ever wanted.”
A questioning look came over Chas’s face and his mouth worked for several moments before he spoke. “Did April tell you everything?”
Was she ready to tell him that? It was too late to try to find a way around the truth. “Chas, I know about the baby.”
Chas groaned and his own fingers started working. “She expected me to understand why a baby wouldn’t fit in with her life-style. She said a man would understand that.” In the space of a single blink Chas’s eyes became blazing ebony lights. “If it takes a man to understand abortion, then I don’t ever want to grow up!”
“Chas?” Michon took a steadying breath, not sure she had the courage to say what was pressing painfully against her temples. But if she didn’t reveal April’s last words they would continue to haunt her for the rest of her life. “April did more than tell me about the abortion.” She waited until Chas was staring at her and then went on. “She—she said it was the worst mistake of her life.”
Chas blinked. His hands were rubbing against the taut fabric of his jeans, but he seemed unaware of the telltale gesture. “That’s not what she said the last time I saw her. She wasn’t going to inconvenience her life with a baby.”
Michon shook her head. She felt as if she were in a canoe poised at the brink of a stretch of rapids. Either her control of the canoe would stand the test, or she’d be dashed helplessly, fatally, against the cruel rocks. “She can’t stop thinking about how a baby would have filled her life.”
Chas turned his back on her, walked to the kitchen window, and stared out at the mountains. “It’s too late for that.”
“I know,” Michon whispered in reply. With every fiber in her she ached to reach out and take him in her arms, but she was afraid. April was the one love of his life. Now he knew how she really felt about their baby.
Would he go back to her? And if he did, how could she go on living?
“How was she?” Chas asked without turning around. “Is she all right?”
He was asking that of her? Chas expected her to give him a report on his old love? But because being near him, talking to him—even about April—was easier than being alone, Michon supplied the answers.
She told him of how impressed she’d been by April’s business, her obvious command of her world. “She looks good, Chas,” Michon said around the tears that threatened to break free. “She takes care of herself. She dresses well. She said she didn’t think she’d ever find another man like you.” There. That was the hardest of all to say.
“I don’t suppose she will,” Chas laughed, a harsh sound that echoed off the window. “Not every man is going to ask her to give up all her success for a log cabin.”
“Home,” Michon corrected. “A log home. She—Chas, I think, in some respects, she still loves you.” Why was she doing this to herself?
Chas whirled around. The muscles around his mouth were contracting, turning his features into something savage and frightening. Instead of speaking he picked up a hammer and stared at it as if it were capable of revealing some answer, some solution. Instinctively Michon recoiled.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked, his words as savage as the look on his face.
“You,” she admitted. “Chas, what are you going to do?”
“Do? Is that all April had to say?”
Michon nodded. When would he go to her? Would he wait until she was out of sight, or would he head for his pickup this minute? “She doesn’t want you to hate her anymore.”
“I don’t hate her. I never did.”
How could you hate anyone you still love? “But you’re bitter,” Michon pointed out despite herself. “I was with you on the John Day. I heard a great deal of how you felt about April.”
“Confession is good for the soul.” Chas dropped his hammer and went back to rubbing the fabric stretched over his muscled thighs, as if the gesture were necessary to clear his thinking. Michon found herself unable to think of anything save what, if anything, would happen if it were her hands that were on his body.
“So April’s still successful, is she?” Chas asked softly, seemingly unaware that he had an audience. “She’s an ambitious woman. She usually gets what she wants.”
But not this time. She didn’t get your baby, Chas. “I guess,” Michon managed. “I don’t know if she’s happy.”
“She will be.”
When you return to her? Is that what you’re saying? Michon’s head was pounding, making it nearly impossible for her to concentrate on anything. “You—you sound sure of that,” she said despite herself. Why was she prolonging the agony? She should turn and run. But Chas’s eyes held her as firmly as any chains.
“I’ll get in touch with her. We have a lot to talk about.”
No! She couldn’t take it anymore! Why had she come here, risked everything in this final, desperate attempt to gain back what she and Chas had begun? He was going back to April! That was all her shattered heart heard.
Michon turned away from Chas, escape the only thing on her mind. Because the sawhorses and wood were between her and Chas, she would be able to reach the front door before he could stop her. As if he would try.
Michon was barely aware of the desperate movement of her legs as she fought to separate herself from Chas. He had April. She had brought them back together.
And she? She had nothing!
Michon heard Chas call her name, but she didn’t look back to see if he was following. All she wanted was to get back in her car and leave the log home she foolishly once thought would have room for her in it.
She was outsid
e, in sun brilliant enough to cause her to squint. She grabbed for the handmade railing and stumbled down the stairs, blinded both by the sunlight and her tears.
She’d reached the ground when twin vises clamped themselves around her arms, and she was pulled tight against Chas’s chest.
“Let me go!” she sobbed.
“I will not let you go!” Relentlessly Chas turned her around until she had no choice but to look up into his ebony eyes. With every fiber of strength in her she fought against their power, but it was no use. His arms held her body prisoner as surely as her heart was helpless to cast him off. She felt her breath coming in short, desperate gasps, her breasts straining against her blouse. There was no way she could still her body’s violent shaking.
“Why are you trembling?” he asked, his breath a fiery brand on her already inflamed cheeks.
“You don’t know? Damn you, Chas, you’ll never understand!” she shot back with more fury than she knew she was capable of. “I acted as your little messenger girl, didn’t I? I brought you word of your precious April. I’m sorry if you want more out of me, but that’s all I’m capable of. Now, let me go!”
“I will not! In your present state you wouldn’t get a mile without having an accident.”
Michon couldn’t deny the logic of his statement. Her hands trembled so violently that she would never be able to control a steering wheel. “I’ll be fine if you’ll just let me go.”
“Why?” Chas pulled away from her slightly, his hands still gripping her securely. “The sun’s glancing off your hair. Did I tell you that I like it much better when you do it yourself?”
“Stop it! Don’t play games with me.”
“I’m not playing games.” His voice was low. “I don’t play games, Michon. I think you’ve figured that out by now.”
“Aren’t you?” she managed. Her fingers ached to bury her nails in his flesh, but he wasn’t giving her the opportunity. “What do you call my role in what’s going on between you and April?”
“What’s going on between me and April?”
